EQAO Grade 6 Practice Test: 22 Questions With Worked Answers

The short answer

There is no pass and no fail. EQAO's own wording: "The provincial standard is not used to determine if a student passes or fails." Results "are not included in grades that appear on report cards for students." If that is the question you came with, it is answered, and our EQAO results guide covers what the levels actually mean.

Where the evidence says to spend your time

This is the part no other page about this test will tell you, and it comes from EQAO's own data release of 3 December 2025.

EQAO followed the same children from Grade 3 in 2021-2022 through to Grade 6 in 2024-2025, and reported what happened to each subject. Here is the whole table, for English-language schools:

Read the bold column. In reading and writing, about 4 children in 100 who met the standard in Grade 3 did not meet it in Grade 6. In math it was 15 in 100. That is 15,828 children, and it is close to four times the literacy rate.

The other direction is just as lopsided. A quarter of children rose to the standard in writing between Grade 3 and Grade 6. In math, 8% did.

And this window is unusual, which is what makes it worth an evening. EQAO tracked the next leg too, Grade 6 in 2021-2022 to Grade 9 in 2024-2025, across 107,050 students in math. There, 5% dropped from the standard. So the 15% is not simply what happens as school gets harder. It is specific to the years between the Grade 3 test and the Grade 6 one.

EQAO's own headline on that release puts it plainly: math achievement "Remains an Area of Concern", while literacy is "Strong and Stable by Grade 6 and into Secondary School".

So if you have one evening, the honest answer is that it probably belongs to the math component. That is why fourteen of the twenty-two questions below are math, and it is why they are spread across every strand rather than piled onto arithmetic.

One caution about that number, because it cuts both ways. The 15% is a provincial pattern, not a prediction about your child. A specific child who found Grade 3 math easy may sail through Grade 6. It tells you where the risk is concentrated. It cannot tell you who carries it.

What this test actually is

The full name explains something parents get wrong. It is the Junior Division assessment, and EQAO describes it as covering Grades 4 to 6, not Grade 6 alone. Its words: it "tests the reading, writing and mathematics knowledge and skills students are expected to have learned by the end of Grade 6."

It is built on two curriculum documents, The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1-8: Language (2023) and The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1-8: Mathematics (2020), up to the end of Grade 6. Three years of school. You cannot revise that in a fortnight, and you are not meant to.

How it differs from the Grade 3 test

If you sat with the same child through the Grade 3 practice test three years ago, four things have changed.

It is longer. The language component runs as four sessions of roughly 35 minutes each, covering reading and writing. The math component is four stages of roughly 30 minutes each. Schools spread these across the window rather than running them back to back.

Your child gets more tools in math. The junior math component includes a built-in calculator and access to the EQAO Formula Sheet, which gives formulas for the area of various shapes. Grade 3 has neither. In the junior language component your child can also make rough notes on screen.

There are open-response questions in language. Alongside single-selection, multiple-selection, drag and drop, drop-down menu and checklist items, the language component asks your child to write.

Money is now on the curriculum. Financial Literacy is one of the six strands of Grade 6 math, so a question about a discount and sales tax is fair game. It was not a strand at all before 2020, which matters more than it sounds. See the next section.

The platform itself has one detail worth mentioning to a nervous eleven-year-old: breathing exercises are built into it. EQAO says they are there "to help students stay calm and focused". Your child is not the first to feel this way, and the people who built the test knew it.

What is stale on the first page of Google for this search

Checked on 27 August 2026. This matters because it is where a parent looking for practice actually lands.

One page-one result organises its practice booklets by strands Ontario deleted in 2020. Its booklets are headed Data Management and Probability, Measurement, Patterning and Algebra, Number Sense and Numeration, and Geometry and Spatial Sense. Ontario replaced that map in 2020 with Number, Algebra, Data, Spatial Sense and Financial Literacy. A child working through those booklets is practising a strand list that no longer exists, and will never meet a money question.

Another page-one result's newest material is from 2011. It is a teacher's blog offering past tests. Its scoring guides run 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and stop. It is currently the fifth result.

Google's own suggested questions carry the pass or fail myth. Directly under the results, it offers to tell you what happens when a child fails the Grade 6 assessment. Nothing happens, because there is nothing to fail.

A board page on the third page still describes the 2021-2022 school year in the future tense. Its wording: in 2021-2022 the primary and junior assessments "will be online."

And there is a real supply gap behind all of it. Every related search Google offers for this term is a hunt for a PDF. The reason is structural: EQAO publishes released questions for math only. Both of its Grade 6 released sets, November 2025 and November 2023, are headed Mathematics. There is no official released set for reading or writing, which is why parents end up on strangers' uploads of decade-old board booklets. That gap is why this page includes reading and writing, and not just numbers.

The official page is still the best thing on that search, and it should be your second stop after this one. It carries the real sample test, which runs on the actual platform your child will use.

What EQAO itself says about preparing

Before you use the questions below, read the line the practice industry leaves out. It is on EQAO's own page for this assessment:

"Since EQAO assessments are aligned with The Ontario Curriculum, which is used for classroom instruction, students do not require additional preparation."

That is the test authority saying practice is not required. We agree with it, and it sets the limits of what this page is for.

Practice will not teach three years of curriculum in an evening. What it does do is narrower and still worth something. It shows your child the shape of the questions so the format is not a surprise. And it shows you which kind of question goes wrong, which is information the school year will otherwise hand you in September, months after it would have been useful.

That is the whole claim. Anything more than that is being sold to you.

How to use this at the kitchen table

Split it across three evenings. Reading and writing one night, math over two. Do not do it in one sitting.

Sit beside them. Read instructions aloud if they want them read. In the real assessment your child can have text read aloud by the computer, along with zoom, high contrast, a highlighter, an eraser and a line reading tool, so reading aloud at home is not cheating.

Let them use a calculator on the math questions, because the real math component has one built in. Give them paper for rough work.

Do not time it. Do not add up a score. There is no score here to add up, and inventing one is the fastest way to turn a useful hour into a bad memory.

The one thing worth doing afterwards is looking at which strand went wrong. Every answer below is labelled with the part of the Ontario curriculum it comes from. One wrong answer means nothing. Three wrong answers in the same strand is a pattern, and a pattern is something a teacher can work with.

Reading

Two selections. Both were written for this article.

Selection 1: The Library of Things

Millbrook Public Library has always lent books. Four years ago it started lending other things as well.

It began with a single question from a woman at the front desk. She needed a carpet cleaner for one afternoon and did not want to buy one for the rest of her life. The librarian on duty wrote the request on a sticky note and put it on the staff room door.

Within a month the note had turned into a list. A projector. A sewing machine. A pressure washer. A tent. By the end of that year the library had set aside a room behind the children's section and called it the Library of Things.

The rules are the same as they are for books. You need a library card. You keep the item for one week. If it comes back late, there is a small fine, and if it comes back broken, the library repairs it rather than charging you.

The most borrowed item is not the pressure washer, which people expect, or the projector, which people assume. It is a waffle iron. It goes out almost every weekend and has been repaired twice.

The programme costs the library money it does not obviously get back. A pressure washer does not circulate the way a popular novel does, and it takes up far more shelf space. Ask the head librarian whether it is worth it and she does not talk about the numbers. She talks about the room. On a Saturday morning it is the only part of the building where strangers talk to each other, because everyone in it is halfway through a job at home and wants to say so.

Every library should have one.

Question 1. What is the main idea of this selection?

A. Waffle irons are more popular than pressure washers. B. A library expanded what it lends, and the room where it happens changed how people use the building. C. Millbrook Public Library is running out of shelf space. D. Libraries should charge fines for broken items.

Question 2. Why does the writer include the paragraph about the waffle iron?

A. To explain how the fine system works. B. To show that the most borrowed item is not the one a reader would guess. C. To prove that the programme loses money. D. To describe the room behind the children's section.

Question 3. The selection says the head librarian "does not talk about the numbers." What does this suggest about how she judges the programme?

A. She does not know how much it costs. B. She thinks the numbers are wrong. C. She values what happens in the room more than what the programme returns in money. D. She is not allowed to discuss library finances.

Question 4. Which sentence from the selection states an opinion rather than a fact?

A. "You need a library card." B. "It goes out almost every weekend and has been repaired twice." C. "Every library should have one." D. "By the end of that year the library had set aside a room behind the children's section."

Selection 2: The Last Bus

Nadia checked the time and then checked it again, as if the second look might change something.

The 5:40 was the last one. She had known that when she agreed to stay behind and finish the mural, and she had said yes anyway, because the sky above the school's back wall was still only pencil lines and she wanted to see it blue.

It was blue now. Her hands were blue too, and so was one shoe.

Across the yard the bus shelter was empty. That was not unusual at this hour. What was unusual was the small figure sitting on the kerb beside it, knees up, hood pulled forward, exactly where Nadia had been sitting on her own first week at this school. Nadia knew that shape. She had been that shape.

She looked at the mural once more. Then she put the brushes in the sink, wiped her hands on her jeans, and walked out across the yard instead of towards the doors.

The 5:40 came and went behind her.

Question 5. What does Nadia's decision at the end tell the reader about her, and which detail in the selection best supports your answer?

(Open response. Two or three sentences.)

Writing

Question 6. Which sentence is punctuated correctly?

A. Because the room was full, we moved the meeting outside. B. Because the room was full we moved, the meeting outside. C. Because the room was full: we moved the meeting outside. D. Because the room was full; we moved the meeting outside.

Question 7. Read this sentence: "The library lends tools, it also lends musical instruments and camping gear." Which revision fixes the error?

A. The library lends tools it also lends musical instruments and camping gear. B. The library lends tools; it also lends musical instruments and camping gear. C. The library lends tools, also it lends musical instruments and camping gear. D. The library lends tools, musical instruments, and camping gear, it lends them all.

Question 8. An open-response writing task. We wrote the instruction wording below ourselves. EQAO's own instruction line is not reprinted here, because we do not hold it. Practising against a made-up copy of an official instruction is worse than practising against an honest one.

The task: Some schools have replaced their libraries with computer rooms. Do you agree with this change? Write a short opinion piece of two or three paragraphs. State your opinion clearly, give two reasons, and support each reason with a detail or an example.

Mathematics

Fourteen questions, spread across all six strands of the Grade 6 math curriculum. A calculator is allowed, as it is on the real assessment.

Question 9. Order these from least to greatest.

0.45 3/8 42% 0.4

Question 10. Which of these numbers is farthest from zero?

-12 8 -7 11

Question 11. A hockey practice lasts 45 minutes. The team spends 4/5 of the practice on drills. How many minutes is that?

Question 12. One batch of a recipe needs 0.75 L of milk. You are making 3 batches. How many litres of milk do you need?

Question 13. Calculate.

24 − 3 × (2 + 4) ÷ 2

Question 14. Look at this pattern.

3, 7, 15, 31, ...

Describe the rule and give the next number.

Question 15. Solve for n.

4n − 7 = 29

Question 16. A robot follows these instructions.

Repeat 4 times: move forward 5 steps, turn right 90°.

What shape does the robot trace, and how far does it travel in total?

Question 17. Five students recorded how many minutes they read one evening.

12, 15, 15, 18, 40

Find the mean and the median. Which one better describes a typical evening for this group, and why?

Question 18. A bag holds 3 red counters, 5 blue counters and 4 yellow counters. You take one counter without looking. What is the probability that it is not blue?

Question 19. Two angles in a triangle measure 43° and 68°. What is the third angle?

Question 20. A trapezoid has parallel sides of 8 cm and 12 cm, and a height of 5 cm. What is its area? (On the real assessment, this formula is on the EQAO Formula Sheet.)

Question 21. A rectangular prism measures 6 cm by 4 cm by 3 cm. What is its volume?

Question 22. A jacket is priced at $80 and is marked down by 25%. Ontario's 13% HST is then added to the sale price. What does the jacket cost in total?

Answer key

The working

Question 5. There is no single right answer here. The evidence earns the mark, and the opinion does not. A strong response says that Nadia chose the child over the mural and over her own ride home, and points to the line "She had been that shape" as the detail that explains why. A weaker response says only that Nadia is kind, with nothing from the text attached. If your child gave the second kind, the fix is one question: which words in the story made you think that?

Question 8. Look for three things and ignore everything else. Is the opinion stated in the first paragraph, or does the reader have to wait for it? Are there two distinct reasons, or one reason said twice? Is each reason followed by a detail or example, or does it stop at the claim? Spelling and handwriting are not what this task is testing.

Question 9. Convert everything to decimals. 3/8 = 0.375. 42% = 0.42. So: 0.375, 0.4, 0.42, 0.45, which gives 3/8, 0.4, 42%, 0.45. This is the question type children most often lose, and almost always because they compared the digits rather than the values.

Question 10. Distance from zero ignores the sign. The distances are 12, 8, 7 and 11, so -12 is farthest. A child who answers 11 has ranked the numbers instead of their distances.

Question 11. 45 ÷ 5 = 9, and 9 × 4 = 36 minutes. Or 45 × 0.8 = 36.

Question 12. 0.75 × 3 = 2.25 L.

Question 13. Order of operations. Brackets first: 2 + 4 = 6. Then multiply and divide, left to right: 3 × 6 = 18, and 18 ÷ 2 = 9. Then subtract: 24 − 9 = 15. A child who works strictly left to right gets 63, which is the standard wrong answer here.

Question 14. Each term doubles and gains 1. 3 → 7, 7 → 15, 15 → 31, so 31 × 2 + 1 = 63. A child who looks for a constant difference will not find one, and that is the point of the question.

Question 15. Add 7 to both sides: 4n = 36. Divide by 4: n = 9. Check by substituting: 4 × 9 − 7 = 29.

Question 16. Four equal sides with a 90° turn between each is a square, with sides of 5 steps. Total distance is 4 × 5 = 20 steps. Coding questions like this are usually a shape question wearing a loop.

Question 17. The five values add to 100, so the mean is 20. Put them in order and the middle value is 15, so the median is 15. Four of the five students read fewer than 20 minutes, which means the mean describes none of them well. The 40 is an outlier, and it drags the mean up on its own. The median is the better description.

Question 18. There are 12 counters and 7 of them are not blue, so the probability is 7/12. A child who answers 5/12 has found the probability of blue instead. Reading the word not is most of this question.

Question 19. Angles in a triangle sum to 180°. 43 + 68 = 111, and 180 − 111 = 69°.

Question 20. Add the parallel sides, halve the total, multiply by the height. (8 + 12) ÷ 2 = 10, and 10 × 5 = 50 cm². Note that on the real assessment your child does not need to remember this. It is on the formula sheet, and knowing the sheet exists is worth as much as knowing the formula.

Question 21. 6 × 4 × 3 = 72 cm³. Volume is in cubic units, and the units are part of the answer.

Question 22. Two steps in order. The discount first: 25% off $80 leaves 75% of $80, which is $60. Then the tax on the sale price: 13% of $60 is $7.80, so the total is $67.80. The common error is adding the tax before the discount, or taking 25% off and stopping at $60. Money questions are new to this curriculum, and they are almost always two steps rather than one.

What the answers actually tell you

Three or fewer wrong across the whole set tells you nothing you did not already know. Children make mistakes at nine in the evening.

What is worth reading is the clustering. Look down the strand column of the answer key and count where the wrong answers fall.

If they are spread evenly, there is no message in them. If two or three land in the same strand, that is the thing to raise with the teacher, and you now have the language for it: not "she struggles with math", but "she lost both measurement questions and got the number ones right".

If most of the mistakes are in number and operations, that is the most common pattern in Ontario and the most fixable. If they are in algebra or data, the gap is usually in reading the question rather than in the arithmetic.

And if the reading and writing questions went fine while the math did not, your child has just reproduced the provincial pattern exactly. That is not a verdict on them. It is a description of what this year of school is like across 108,540 children.

When a teacher helps

Most Grade 6 families need nothing beyond the school. If the wrong answers are scattered, or your child is meeting the standard, more practice tests are not the answer.

A practice set finds a gap. It cannot tell you whether the gap matters, and that is the point at which a teacher is worth more than another worksheet. Bring one in when the same difficulty has persisted across a school year, when your child's own teacher has raised it too, or when the mistakes cluster in one strand and you cannot tell how far back the cause goes.

A teacher licensed by a provincial governing body such as the Ontario College of Teachers has taught the curriculum this test is built on. They can look at three wrong measurement questions and say whether that is a Grade 6 problem or the start of a Grade 9 one, because they know what comes next in the sequence. Grade 8 math in Ontario covers where that sequence goes next, and once results arrive, EQAO results explained and Ontario report card levels explained cover the two separate scales you will be handed.

A certified teacher also works backwards from where the child is going, and not only forwards from where they are. They can chart which courses a student will need for the programme they are aiming at, then focus the teaching on the subject areas that get them there. Between Grade 6 and Grade 9 that matters more than at any other point in math, and the province's own tracking data is why.

That is the work Genie does. Genie works only with Canadian Certified Teachers, licensed by a provincial governing body. Before a teacher sees a student profile, their certificate number and issuing body are checked against the provincial registry, with a live government-ID match. Genie calls this the Trust Engine. Students are matched by course, pace and personality, and parents get a per-lesson record of what was covered and what their child understood. Math support sits under math, and reading and writing under English.